YouTube Fined Sh17Billion For Breaching Children Privacy

YouTube has been slapped with a fine of $170 million an equivalent of Ksh.17 billion over allegations of collecting personal information about children. YouTube was accused of tracking viewers of children’s channels using cookies without parental consent.

The Google-owned giant video sharing platform which is also under the parent company Alphabet Inc, has been accused of breaching children privacy by using the cookies tracked to deliver billions in targeted advertisements to those viewers.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the fine on Wednesday, that will reportedly see about $34 million (Ksh.3.4 billion) of the amount sent to the New York attorney general’s office.

“YouTube touted its popularity with children to prospective corporate clients. Yet when it came to complying with, the federal law banning collecting data on children, the company refused to acknowledge that portions of its platform were clearly directed to kids,” FTC Chairman Joe Simons said in a statement.

“Google and YouTube knowingly and illegally monitored, tracked, and served targeted ads to young children just to keep advertising dollars rolling in,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The fine was in accordance with a law banning the collection of information about children under 13 years old which was first introduced in 1998 before later being revised in 2013 to include cookies.

Responding in a statement posted on its blog, YouTube said it would:

“limit data collection and use on videos made for kids only to what is needed to support the operation of the service.”

The video streaming service has also been forced to introduce YouTube Kids for children according to their age brackets and where disturbing videos would be excluded.